These two related studies grew out of the convegno, 1472: Sant’Andrea – Alberti 550: l’architetto e la basilica, held in Mantua in October 2022 to commemorate the 550^th anniversaries of the beginning of construction of the church of Sant’Andrea and the death of its original architect, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472).

A structural engineer and widely published author on the history of the church, Livio Volpi Ghirardini was appointed by the Diocese of Mantua to oversee for decades the well-being of the building. His intimate knowledge of its fabric is manifest in his essay, The Sant’Andrea of Alberti. Annotations on the Pronaos (1472–1494), that subjects the pronaos, or porch, to scrutiny that reveals the surprising subtlety of its design.

Eugene J. Johnson began his investigation of the history of the church in the autumn of 1963 in preparation for his dissertation, which was published with revisions by Pennsylvania State University Press as S. Andrea in Mantua, the Building History in 1975. In the present paper, Pagan Architecture Becomes Christian: Leon Battista Alberti at Sant’Andrea in Mantua, he returns to the subject to consider the spate of publications occasioned largely by the 600^th anniversary of the birth of Alberti in 2004, and to offer new thoughts on its history and meaning.